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Sunday, June 30, 2013

The Summer of Jules*

I absolutely love Sundays. Especially Sundays in the summertime. Is there anything better than being a teacher during this time of year? Now that my in-service and meetings are over, the answer is a resounding no. I'm even thinking about hiding my alarm clock like Rockband Barbie does!

Another reason I love Sunday so much is that it's the one day of the week that I'm guaranteed to see my husband. He is literally the busiest person I know. He has a pretty demanding Monday through Friday job, and he is also a musician. More often than not, I don't get to see him on Friday and Saturday nights. So, by default, Sunday night is our date night.

We had the absolute best time today. I have been dying to see The Heat with Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy since the moment I heard about it. Believe me, people… it did not disappoint. I think it may be one of the funniest movies I've seen in quite a while. We saw the preview for Anchorman 2 before the movie started. I cannot wait for that one.

My morning started with coffee, of course. About 45 minutes later, I was pretty hungry. Do I really even need to show you this photo anymore? I bet you can guess what I had. But not so fast… Look! There's ham!

I decided to add a little bit more protein, hoping that it would hold me a little bit longer. I got pretty hungry after breakfast yesterday, so I added an ounce of smoked ham.

My lunch was a new one. I made the easiest egg salad ever with one hard boiled egg, and a tablespoon of Oikos Greek Yogurt Vegetable Herb Dip. These dips are a new discovery for me, and the nutrition stats are great. There are four different favors. Right now I can only find them at Walmart.

I also had five reduced fat Ritz crackers and one ounce of smoked ham. Can y'all tell I'm trying to finish this ham?

Dinner! This is something I have been really excited about. Going out to dinner with John. Another blog I really like is called Bariatric Foodie. Although Nikki had gastric bypass surgery, a lot of the advice and recipes she mentions work wonderfully for us Bandsters too. She features really useful restaurant guides, and one in particular that I loved reading was the guide for BD's Mongolian Grill. Our local chain is called Genghis Grill, but it sounds exactly the same. It also happens to be one of John's favorite places to eat. I like it a lot, but it was never my absolute favorite. That is… until I realized it was a protein paradise! I built today's bowl knowing full well that it would be two meals. I was thrilled to see that their website features a full nutrition PDF. You can literally calculate any bowl you choose to build. My bowl was a combination of chicken, shrimp, sliced beef, eggs, water chestnuts, onions, red curry sauce, and a seasoning blend of salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

They let you "choose your starch" and have options such as rice, fried rice, spiral pasta, or flour tortillas. I picked the flour tortillas not knowing if I would eat it or not. I knew I definitely didn't want the rice or the pasta. The flour tortillas are 100 calories each, and I ended up eating half of one. My bowl was delicious and this meal, more than any other meal so far, really illustrated how LITTLE restriction I have right now. I could have very easily eaten three fourths of it and the rest of the tortilla. One thing that kept me from overdoing it is that I know it will be just as good when I have the rest of it for dinner tomorrow night. That, and I didn't want to have a stuck episode in the middle of the restaurant. :)

After we finished dinner, we made a quick stop at the house to drop off the leftovers and then went to the grocery store. I have quite a few ideas for things I want to make this week. Our main objective was to be home in time for the season premiere of Dexter!